“That could have been you,” Garrick quipped.
The statue remained motionless as Aldrick walked around the outstretched hand, examining the wedge from all sides.
Aelianna frowned. “This is stupid. How we take this?”
“I’m not sure,” Aldrick said, scanning the room. “However, I know Kian meant for me to have it, so there must be a solution here.”
Garrick closed his eyes. “I feel a great power emanating here, but I think it’s coming from the statue.”
Warren looked skeptical. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Garrick opened his eyes and looked directly at Aldrick, “this is not the Tritaph.”
“Not the Tritaph?” Aldrick looked up in surprise. “But I’m certain it looks like this!”
Garrick stared at the wedge. “That may be, but I don’t feel this is what we are looking for.”
“Another bloody trial?” Dathan suggested.
Garrick shrugged. “I have no idea.”
Aldrick closed his eyes, trying to recall his conversation with Kian. Had he mentioned this, or hinted at a solution? His language had been archaic, but understandable; Aldrick had read enough old texts to manage. He was having trouble recalling his exact words and was beginning to feel frustrated, when the solution struck him like a bolt of lightning.
He was still hesitant to consciously use his ability––in the past it had always happened of its own accord––but now he relaxed and concentrated. A moment later, he could see his conversation with Kian being replayed word for word, much like it was happening again.
It had made little sense at the time when Kian had said, “Remember, all will not be as it may seem. I doth believe thou wilt know what thou must do.” Yet he had no idea what to do; what could Kian have meant?
Logic, he had said. Logic would serve him. Logically, he would want to protect something as powerful as the Tritaph, as Kian would undoubtedly wish to do. Certainly he could not allow just anyone to possess an artifact of such significance. Yet, they could not carry away the artifact while it was protected like this. What better protection could such a powerful object have, than being physically unable to touch?
Following the path of sudden inspiration, Aldrick turned to Aelianna. “You said the Clavis led us here and no further, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“We have arrived and know it’s here, and yet according to Garrick what we see before us is not the Tritaph,” Aldrick explained. “Therefore, it must still be hidden here somewhere.”
Warren scratched his head. “I don’t understand. This is the Tritaph, isn’t it?”
“No,” Aldrick shook his head. “This must be a decoy. The real Tritaph remains hidden.”
“Fantastic,” Garrick sighed. “But where?”
Aelianna glanced around the room. “Nothing is here but statue.”
“There is one other thing,” Aldrick said, eyeing the central stone tablet. He walked over to where the statue had stood in the middle of the room and grasped the Clavis, which remained silent in its pyramidal shaped rune. Aldrick tugged, but the golden key would not budge from its place in the stone tablet.
“Aelianna, if you could please try. Concentrate on…the real Tritaph.
Aelianna appeared doubtful, but she took a deep breath and nodded. “I will try.”
Grasping the Clavis, she closed her eyes. Her lips moved but what she said was not audible. A short time passed, and the warrior abruptly pulled the golden device from the stone tablet. She held it there and then turned it, placing it back into the rune, but in a different orientation. There was a moment of silence, and then the room trembled with the resonance of grinding stone.
Startled, Aldrick spun towards the still kneeling stone form of Kian, but the statue had not moved. The room continued to rumble for another heartbeat, and then with a reverberating crack the tablet split down the side like a book and labored open. Aldrick and Aelianna jumped out of the path of the swinging slab of rock, which only narrowly missed them.
When the cloud of stone dust finally cleared, they could see a nook hidden inside of the large tablet. Resting inside the concealed alcove lay a twin of the dark obsidian wedge held by the statue, but the inside of this one swirled with a cloud of stars.
They gathered around, staring at it until Aldrick broke the silence. “Garrick?”
“That’s it,” was the hushed reply.
Aldrick stepped forward and held his breath. With a quick glance at his companions, he gingerly picked up the swirling wedge, which glowed brighter when he held it. He started to turn around, but before anyone could speak, they heard a familiar voice from the arched doorway.
“I must thank you for retrieving the device for me. You’ve certainly made my job easier.”
They spun to confront the source of the voice, but Aldrick felt dread settling over him like a net. He recognized the owner of the nasally voice before he saw him. Jahann had found them once more.
Chapter 19
“You will not have it!” Aelianna shouted at Jahann in defiance.
His self-satisfied smile turned into a dry chuckle, followed by a racking cough. Wiping his mouth with a white handkerchief, Ra’jahankar replied to their surprised looks. “I heard you speak of the Tritaph. I suspected you were after something of power; otherwise you would not have traveled this far. I never suspected it would be the Tritaph, however. Even my Master, who sees much, did not mention this.”
Aelianna surreptitiously retrieved one of her remaining arrows while Jahann spoke, and in the blink of an eye nocked the feathered shaft, and loosed it towards the sorcerer. The bald man reacted faster than Aldrick would have given him credit for, raising a bony hand to launch a quick burst of lightning-like energy. The arrow sizzled and fell smoking to the floor, but the sparkling light expanded and lanced in bright arcing arms, crackling and popping across the entire room.
They dropped to the floor and covered their heads to avoid the sizzling lightning. Shortly, the bright energy bolts were drawn directly into the Tritaph, and before long the arcing energy had been completely absorbed into the swirling obsidian wedge. Aldrick cradled the glowing device in his hands, which amazingly remained cool to the touch even after absorbing the bright coruscating power.
The look on his face said Ra’jahankar had clearly not expected his lambent lightning-like defense to rebound throughout the room and be absorbed into the Tritaph as it had. His look of shock quickly changed to one of speculation, however.
“Tritaph, or no,” he said, wiping his nose with the white handkerchief, “you have certainly found a device of great power. This could be the very thing I need to depose my Master. Give me the object!”
“Never!” shouted Aldrick.
“Fine,” Ra’jahankar spat. Without further comment he began to chant unintelligibly, as he had done before on the cliff. Aelianna loosed another arrow, but it deflected off a bubble of light, which abruptly sprang up around the sorcerer.
Garrick and Dathan unsheathed their swords and ran forward, but before they reached him a shockwave blasted out from the sorcerer and expanded outward, knocking everyone backward. Aldrick fell hard onto the outstretched stone hand of the giant Kian, and the Tritaph wedge flew out of his hands, landing on the white marble floor with a clatter.
Ra’jahankar glided across the floor and stooped to retrieve the star-filled wedge. The moment he touched it the spherical light force surrounding him dissipated, absorbed into the Tritaph as the lightning had before it. The sorcerer gazed into the obsidian wedge, which grew darker as he held it, until a great rumble filled the hall.
They were thrown to the floor again as the hall trembled, and Aldrick was shocked to see the circle of black marble columns begin to move. With a cacophonous grinding of stone, the marble supports broke apart and began to form makeshift limbs and featureless heads. The evenly spaced golden bands relocated to become the joints of the stone soldiers, allowing them to move. Final golden circles were embedded
on the ends of their arms like circular melee weapons, which appeared razor sharp in the eternal torchlight.
Once formed, the dozen black marble creatures swiveled towards them and began to advance, waving their sharp disk style weapons menacingly. Garrick and Dathan raised their swords and Aelianna launched an experimental arrow, which was easily deflected off the hard stone bodies of the rock soldiers. They dodged the initial attack of the stone defenders, but their own blades were turned as easily as the arrows had been.
The majority of the stone soldiers advanced towards Ra’jahankar, who came out of his reverie just in time to defend himself with a hastily erected glowing shield of energy.
With their own weapons clearly useless against the dark stone monsters, they concentrated on dodging their slow, yet powerful attacks while the sorcerer struggled to maintain his shield. The temple continued to rumble, and small cracks began to appear in the gleaming marble floor and carved walls. Small at first, the spidery cracks widened and expanded at an alarming rate.
The sorcerer conjured another shockwave, knocking the stone attackers backward. The blast shattered several of the closest, and glistening chunks of black stone tumbled to the floor. His smirk of victory quickly transformed to one of consternation as the bits of broken rock and stone began to tremble and move, reassembling with a loud grinding and scraping.
The dark stone soldiers who had escaped destruction by the shockwave abandoned fighting Aldrick and his companions, and instead spun around to confront Jahann. The sorcerer quickly erected his shield against this new attack, but sweat ran down his forehead and his hands shook. It was obvious he could not maintain his sorcery for much longer.
Now that the attention of the marble temple defenders was focused completely on Jahann, Garrick wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Think we should help him?”
“Our weapons are useless,” Aldrick surmised. “I don’t know how much help we’d be, even if we were so inclined.”
“True.”
Warren and Dathan were all for escaping without the Tritaph and leaving Jahann to his fate, but Aldrick and the others would not leave it behind. Garrick wondered if they should aid the black marble defenders in an attempt to retrieve the object of their search, but as they debated, the floor and walls of the rumbling chamber trembled and cracked further.
With a sudden loud splitting sound, whole sections of the back wall completely broke away from the main structure, and water began to pour into the room from the gaping cracks. Renewed tremors ensued, and the slow spray of water began to break away additional sections of the wall, quickening the deluge.
“The temple is breaking apart!” Warren moaned. “We should escape now while the rock monsters are fighting Jahann!”
Aldrick shook his head. “Not without the Tritaph.” His mind raced for a solution as the entire temple shook violently, almost knocking them off their feet.
He knew if this continued, it was likely the building would collapse, leaving them buried in rubble. Small chunks of the ceiling began to fall intermittently, and clouds of stone dust sifted down with every new tremor.
It was then that Aldrick realized what might be the cause of the defenders strange behavior. He doubted the sorcerer would listen, but made the attempt anyway. “Jahann!”
Straining to maintain his weakening shield against the black marble defenders, the sorcerer did not react.
“Why are you talking to him?” Warren screeched. “Let’s go!”
“Quiet!” Garrick reprimanded.
”Jahann, listen to me!” Aldrick tried again, stepping closer and waving to get the attention of the sorcerer.
Ra’jahankar spotted his approach out of the corner of one eye. Sweat poured voluminously from his bald head, and he no longer cast offensive spells. Aldrick knew next to nothing of magic, but he did know when an opponent was losing, and desperation was setting in. Ra’jahankar had that look now, and Aldrick could see his glowing shield was flickering and appeared weaker.
“Why do they not attack you?” the sorcerer demanded, one arm extended out to maintain his shield, the other still clutching the dark obsidian wedge.
Aldrick saw the shattered defenders were nearly reformed. Although it was conceivable they might attack them instead of Jahann, he chose not to mention that possibility to the mage.
“They attack you because you hold the Tritaph.”
“That’s foolish!” Jahann spat. “They did not attack when you held it!”
“That is because I was meant to have it,” Aldrick replied. “The power of the Tritaph was meant for creation; for good. I wish only to protect people with it. To save lives. That is why they did not attack me.”
“Ridiculous!” Jahann argued. “Power by definition is meant to use and control, and to destroy your enemies. It serves no other purpose.”
“That is where you are wrong, Jahann. There is the power of creation, and of life. There is the power of love.”
“I don’t understand,” Jahann said with a note of desperation in his voice.
“That is why you aren’t meant to have the Tritaph,” Aldrick said sadly.
The tremors increased in violence and new sections of the back wall broke away, allowing more water to rush into the room. A large section of falling ceiling just missed them, and the water in the chamber was now ankle deep and rising quickly.
“For this to end you must give me the Tritaph,” Aldrick said. “Otherwise you’ll be buried here with it. Either way, you will never command its power.”
“NO!” Jahann raged. “I must possess it!”
A massive tremor knocked them to the wet floor and they fell with a splash as most of the back wall gave way. They struggled to their feet as torrents of water rushed into the room. The sorcerer desperately struggled to maintain his shield as the rest of the newly reformed defenders joined their companions.
The water level now approaching his waist, Aldrick called out, “You cannot survive this!”
“None of us will survive this,” Warren whimpered.
A massive section of ceiling near the front of the room crashed down with a loud splash and a huge slab of white broken marble fell against the doorway blocking the only visible exit from the chamber.
With a cry, Warren waded to the exit and began to struggle against the great slab. Garrick and Dathan joined him, but with the rising water they could not get any leverage against the massive block of stone.
“Looks like your friend was right,” Ra’jahankar chuckled in a raspy voice.
“Ra’jahankar, you can end this!” Aldrick beseeched the sorcerer; using his full name in the hope his point would be more effective.
The sorcerer was now treading water, and he looked about desperately as his shield flickered weakly. Finally he shouted, “Fine! We’ll try it your way.” With a last surge of power he floated the obsidian wedge out through the shield and between the defenders.
The moment Aldrick grasped the Tritaph, the immense ebon marble defenders fell apart, and chunks of stone splashed noisily into the water. The sorcerer dropped his shield, and slumped in the rising water, exhausted.
Afraid the sorcerer would attempt to retrieve the Tritaph now that the defenders were destroyed, Aldrick clutched it to his chest. When the sorcerer raised his head however, all he said was, “It would seem you were correct. I will allow you to hold the object…for now.”
Aldrick did not like the ominous tone in his voice, but escape now presented the greater concern.
Ra’jahankar turned towards the others and croaked in a tired voice, “Get away from there.”
They hesitated in their vain attempt to move the stone and stared at the sorcerer, but no one moved away from the doorway.
Ra’jahankar sighed. “Do you wish to leave or not? I cannot carry the device out myself; therefore you must do it for me. I will clear the debris.”
No one believed his intentions were anything but self-serving, but they backed away from the blocked egress. The sorcerer lifted
a tired arm and with a quick blast of lighting burst the massive slab of stone apart, clearing the archway. As it had before, the crackling power arced around the chamber wildly, until finally being absorbed into the piece of the Tritaph, which Aldrick still clung to.
Before dissipating completely, one bright arcing arm of lightning jumped up to the cracked ceiling above them and blasted a massive section of stone. Rock and debris rained down and they covered their heads preparing to be crushed.
Aldrick winced, but when he realized he was unharmed, he opened his eyes to find Ra’jahankar gesticulating and chanting softly. The bulk of the fallen ceiling was being held by his power just a hand span above their heads.
The Key of Creation: Book 03 - The Temple of Kian Page 16